“Downton Abbey” Season 3 ended on a shocking note with Matthew Crawley dying in a car crash because actor Dan Stevens decided to leave the show. Stevens’ departure meant the end of a fan favorite couple, as well as a major plot force.

Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary, appears on the August cover of Harper’s Bazaar UK.Inside the magazine, she talks about what’s next for “Downton Abbey” and the now widowed single mother Lady Mary.

Dockery, 31, revealed that “Downton Abbey” Season 4 will open several months after Matthew’s death and Mary will still be in mourning, having refused to switch from black to lilac after three months. Cora, her mother, will be trying to introduce her to new suitors, but Mary will refuse. However, she will take an interest in Downton’s estate, as her son is now the heir.

“She’s really grown up. When I look back to series one, she was a teenager really – a petulant, spoiled girl – and now she’s a woman,” Dockery said.

She added that Stevens’ departure “has opened a whole door of opportunity for Mary.”

Dockery said that, unlike Stevens, she’ll stick with “Downton Abbey” until the series ends.

“There’s a part of me that doesn’t want it to end, because I love it so much…and once it’s all over, I’m sure there will be a period when I feel slightly at a loss,” she added.

“It’s like this love affair that I have with my job,” she said.

Series creator Julian Fellowes also revealed plot points to the magazine. He said Matthew’s death gives “Downton Abbey” the chance “to explore and examine Mary’s grief, the sadness of someone who had opened up slowly and almost reluctantly to real love, only to be deprived of it at the height of her happiness.

“Is she simply missing Matthew? Or somehow angry at the soft person he made her, and anxious to regain some of the forcefulness she surrendered to be with him?

“All these elements are to be found in Michelle’s performance this year, and I am pretty confident that the audience will enjoy watching her journey, through sorrow towards the new day, enormously.”